THREE+ME: Doing it write

Sunday

An evil lord that’s enslaved a galaxy. An underdog who’s determined to fight him. And a guy who, for whatever reason, insists on hiding in a bush.

These characters aren’t from a movie or a sci-fi novel. They’re from the imagination of my 10-year-old stepson.

He tells tales like this, in impressive detail, to me, his dad, his mom — anyone who will listen — in the store, in the car, before dinner, at dinner, after dinner ... You get the idea. And since the summer, I’ve casually suggested he write some of it down, because the stories have a lot of decent concepts in them.

But he’s 10, and writing isn’t really his thing. So I let it go. As long as his mind is working to come up with the ideas themselves, he meets his creativity quota. Right?

Well, at least until school came into the picture. Recently, his teacher requested that his homework answers be more thorough — which at first surprised me, because the way this kid talks, you’d think his answers would be as novelesque as his conversation.

But writing and talking are two different things. And writing homework answers, well, there’s a lot of other things a kid (or anyone, lets be honest) would much rather spend his time doing.

But it’s school, and that’s not something we can just ignore. He had to work on this.

That’s when I wondered: What if he wrote something he’d actually want to write about? What if, to practice writing for school, he could write the stories he tells his parents and me?

My husband approved of the idea. Now, we just had to get the kid on board.

Outright ordering him to write, would be a terrible idea.

Even remotely hinting it had anything to do with school, would be even worse.

Subtlety. That’s what I needed. And generally, that ain’t my strong suit.

Then one night, he showed me a Lego Bionicle character he was building, modeled after himself. As he described what the character would look like, and what role he would play, I commented, “Wow, it’s fascinating.”

His ears perked up. “You think I’m fascinating?” he asked.

“Well of course I do,” I told him. “You’re a pretty awesome kid. And I love listening to the stories you come up with.” Aaaaand ladies and gentlemen, this was my way in. “Ya know, I wish you’d write them down sometime.”

There. I’d found my window of opportunity, and I nudged it open a crack.

“You think I should?” he asked.

“Absolutely. I mean, the stuff you come up with,” I inched that window open a little more, “it would make a great book.”

And we talked about it. He admitted he doesn’t really like writing because of how long it takes, which is understandable. So I suggested instead of trying to hit a word count, focus on a time limit instead. (That night, I’d said 45 minutes; a few days later, a friend pointed out that might be too overwhelming for a kid, so we shrunk it down to 20 minutes.)

We talked about the characters, and what their names were, and how he’d spell them — and how he’d act out the scenes first with his Bionicle figures, to kickstart his ideas before writing them — and how he needed a notebook to put it all in.

I had to involve him in the decision, make it seem fun, and as much as possible, guide him so it seemed like it was his idea to begin with.

The window was wide open now. And he hopped right through it.

Since then, he’s started putting his story to paper. My original thought had been, he’d work on it by himself, because he could think better. But the second night, he asked if I could write with him.

Even though that made me a little nervous (I’m better at playing and encouraging, than disciplining and directing), I sat with him in the living room, with his dad reading nearby to help us out or back me up whenever I needed it.